Tuesday, November 20, 2007

NiggyTardust!

Stumbled over this when I was reading about how pissed Trent Reznor is at his record company, Universal.

Apparently, he wants to have fans remix and upload his latest album to the official site - but Universal are spooked because they are involved in a humongous lawsuit against YouTube and MySpace. Legal paranoia ruining a fine idea - even if it is not very ground-breaking. David Bowie did the same with one of his albums a couple of years ago - although I seem to recall it was tied to the music program Acid and some limited track selections. I remember I was all agitated and downloaded everything to give it a go - but lost heart after one measly evening of slider-pulling and creative vacuum.

Funny how you can be bubbling with ideas when walking under a clear sky. Then, when you want to activate and actualise all those dreams you are hit in the face by the inertia of reality's tools.

Hm, what a strange paragraph...I stand by it, though.

Well, back to the initial point - Saul Williams (left field poetic rapper) is giving away his album for free, much like Radiohead. Except he has optimised the concept and asked $5 for the really high-grade download (320 Kbit/s or FLAC). Very reasonable - I opted to pay even if 192 Kbit/s is usually fine for me.Reznor is deeply involved in the production of said album - and that pairing cannot be half bad.